Going rogue

Yeah, I answered that question last year. I'm not doing it again.

So, aside from the virtual inability to blog this weekend, I have to say that I like Buffalo at St. Patrick's. I also like Buffalo in the summer - specifically from the Hellenic Festival to the Sorrento Cheese Italian Heritage Festival*. Embarrassingly, I've never been to the Chicken Wing Festival, but I love this place in the summer because of the Taste of Buffalo. Actually, I like Buffalo most of the time. Yes, it is cold. Yes, it does snow. But it isn't as cold as Watertown, and it doesn't snow as much as Syracuse. The bad weather reputation is undeserved.

The Queen City has a thriving theatre and arts scene, a shit-load of colleges and universities (with all the attendant wisdom, research and snobbery), world-class hospitals and more bars than schools and churches combined.

In fact, I defy you far-flungers to find me a place in Chicago, Boston or New York to find me a place like my new Club. Open to the public, with draft beer under two bucks - a dollar and a quarter for members. A basketball court, with several days of open gym and basketball and volleyball leages and tournaments - free for members. Every Friday, we go there for fish fry, spending less than $25 for a couple, including lots of food and plenty of beer. Last night I spent twenty bucks on all-you-can-eat corned beef and cabbage buffet and all-you-care-to-drink beer and soda. Membership in this club is a measly fifty bucks a year. That's less than I would pay anywhere else just for the basketball court once a week. Figure in that I'm saving 50 cents to a dollar with each beverage, and I'm making money! Only in America!

The only thing I can't get in this town is a freakin' job.

*I don't like the Sorrento Cheese Italian Heritage Festival. I find it offensive, and I'm not Italian. Perhaps I missed the heyday of this weekend long crap fest, but based on my disappointing experiences over the past couple of years, there is very little Italianness involved. There is some Italian food, but there is a lot of shitty carnival food - the kind of crap they sell out of trailers on the midway of the State and County Fair. "Hey honey, want to go to the Italian Festival and get a corn dog and a fried twinkie? Yea Italy!" And having thirty dudes over the course of three days sing shitty Sinatra covers over and over doesn't make your Festival Italian. It makes you a joke. Call it the North Buffalo Street Fair or the Hertel Avenue Summer Funtasm, and I got no problem. Claim that you're celebrating Italian Heritage and you're a liar.